Finance minister disagrees with World Bank forecast
“Though our industrial and service sectors might face a negative impact, but the effect is relatively less in agricultural side. Even though, due to those losses, there is no reason to say our growth will drop at a “shameful" status of 2 to 3 percent"
Finance Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal has disagreed with the World Bank's forecast that said Bangladesh's economic growth may slump to 2 to 3pc due to the dire situation from Covid-19.
The World Bank made the forecast on Bangladesh's economic growth in its report on "South Asia Economic Focus Spring 2020: A Cursed Blessing of Public Banks" on Sunday.
"According to the eight months' data that we had available before the coronavirus outbreak, our growth saw 7.8 percent growth," the finance minister told The Business Standard.
"No economist or think-tank can give any accurate forecast in this crisis time, because the world is in an uncertain situation because of this novel coronavirus outbreak," he added.
"Though our industrial and service sectors might face a negative impact, but the effect is relatively less in agricultural side. Even though, due to those losses, there is no reason to say our growth will drop at a "shameful" status of 2 to 3 percent," he added.
He continued, "Bangladesh has been doing better than India in the past few years. Bangladesh is the best growing country in the last financial year."
